Meeting Yourself with Compassionate Curiosity: What is Compassionate Inquiry®

What Is Compassionate Inquiry®?

Compassionate Inquiry® (CI) is a psychotherapeutic approach developed by Dr. Gabor Maté. It’s a powerful method for uncovering what lies beneath our patterns, defences, and emotional pain, gently bringing awareness to what’s happening inside us, right now.

At its core, CI is a somatic (body focused) and mindfulness-based process. As practitioners, we often guide clients to pause and notice what’s happening in their bodies as they speak: sensations, impulses, emotions, or subtle shifts in energy. The body holds what the mind has learned to suppress.

Through this process, unconscious beliefs and emotions can surface with more clarity and compassion. We look at the words, tone, posture, and expressions that arise, following the thread of what’s real in the moment rather than staying in the story about the past.

The aim is not to relive trauma but to become aware of the ways it still lives within us. By making the hidden visible, by seeing, feeling, and naming what’s here, we begin to reconnect with authenticity, presence, and choice.

How Compassionate Inquiry® Can Help You

Many people come to Compassionate Inquiry because they notice that just talking about their struggles doesn’t always create lasting change. CI offers a way to go deeper, to understand what drives reactions, anxiety, disconnection, or self-criticism on a somatic and emotional level.

By slowing down and exploring what’s beneath the surface, you can begin to:

• Recognise the core beliefs shaping how you see yourself, others and the world

• Understand how early experiences may still influence present-day responses

• Reconnect with emotions that have been held back or numbed

• Cultivate compassion for the parts of you that learned to protect or adapt

• Develop a greater sense of authenticity and internal safety

  
  

Compassionate Inquiry doesn’t impose techniques or advice. It invites awareness, and from that awareness, new possibilities for healing and connection can naturally emerge.

Integrating Compassionate Inquiry in My Work

There are many ways to integrate Compassionate Inquiry into a healing practice.

In my work, I combine it with education around the nervous system, to help you understand what’s happening in the body, along with somatic awareness practices, regulation tools, and experiential exercises. These elements support you in staying present, expanding your capacity, and integrating insights on a deeper level.

For me, CI is a key that helps us reconnect with the body and truly listen to what it’s saying.